Ramping up their Congressional investigation into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 election, lawmakers have invited directors of the FBI and National Security Agency to testify again, in addition to expressing a desire to hear from the Obama administration’s top intelligence officials.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Mike Conaway has invited FBI Director James Comey and National Security Advisor Adm. Mike Rogers to appear at a closed hearing on May 2.

Former CIA Director John Brennan, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates have been requested to provide public testimony after May 2.

Last month, during the House Committee’s first public hearing, Mr. Comey confirmed his agency has been investigating alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Last October, in the heat of the presidential election, the Obama administration formally accused the Kremlin of stealing and disclosing emails from the Democratic National Committee. At the time, Mr. Clapper issued a statement detailing how leaked DNC emails were “intended to interfere with the U.S. election process.”

Both the Kremlin and the Trump administration insist there is “no evidence of Trump-Russia collusion.”

Ms. Yates, while serving as at the acting attorney general at the start of the year, battled with the White House over the legality of Mr. Trump’s executive order banning certain immigrants and refugees. She questioned the legitimacy of the executive order and Mr. Trump fired her.

Along with his score to Kozintsev's King Lear (1970), Shostakovich's score to Kozintsev's Hamlet (1963 - 1964) is commonly said to be the best of his film scores. The intensity of mood, the concentration of its effect, and the originality of the themes elevate the score far beyond the music for the many propaganda films Shostakovich scored in the late 1930s and again in the late 1940s and early 1950s. But it is the overall integrity and sincerity of the music that elevate the Hamlet music to the highest levels of Shostakovich's art.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A Russian government think tank controlled by Vladimir Putin developed a plan to swing the 2016 U.S. presidential election to Donald Trump and undermine voters’ faith in the American electoral system, three current and four former U.S. officials told Reuters.

Rep. Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee.Thomson Reuters

The House Intelligence Committee said on Friday that it had invited three former officials with knowledge of Russia's interference in the US election to testify in an open hearing in May, over a month after the committee's chairman first scrapped the session.

"Yesterday, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence sent two letters related to its investigation into Russian active measures during the 2016 election campaign," Emily Hytha, a spokeswoman for Republican Rep. Mike Conaway, said on Friday.

"The first letter was sent to FBI Director James Comey and National Security Advisor Admiral Mike Rogers, inviting them to appear at a closed hearing on May 2, 2017," Hytha said. "The second letter was sent to former CIA Director John Brennan, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates inviting them to appear at an open hearing to be scheduled after May 2nd."

The letters appear to mark the end of an impasse that emerged late last month, when the committee's chairman, Devin Nunes, accused Democrats of not signing a letter inviting Comey to testify before the committee in a closed session. Democrats said they did not support substituting an open hearing with a closed one and had been pushing to reschedule the open session with Yates, Brennan, and Clapper that Nunes had scrapped.

"The chairman requested that in lieu of a public hearing we have a closed hearing with James Comey and Mike Rogers," Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell, who sits on the committee, told Business Insiderlate last month. "I did not support having one substitute for another."

Sally Yates, the former US deputy attorney general.Pete Marovich/Getty Images

In the end, the committee agreed to hold both the closed session with Comey and Rogers that Republicans wanted and the open hearing with Yates, Brennan, and Clapper that Democrats advocated.

The compromise is arguably a bigger victory for the Democrats, however, who have been eager to publicly question Yates about her knowledge of former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn's relationship with Russia.

Yates was fired as acting attorney general after refusing to enforce Trump's first executive order on immigration in late January. Earlier that month, she reportedly traveled to the White House to warn Trump administration officials that Flynn could be vulnerable to Russian blackmail.

Interest in Yates' testimony grew even more last month after The Washington Post reported that the White House had tried to prevent her from testifying publicly. The White House has denied the charge.

Brennan has also come back into the spotlight recently amid reports that he established a counterintelligence task force last summer to examine whether the Trump campaign had improper contact with the Kremlin. The investigation was based on intelligence that was handed to the CIA by foreign intelligence agencies beginning in late 2015, The Guardian reported earlier this month.

Clapper's testimony, meanwhile, will be of interest to those who feel that Trump's Russia ties have been overblown. The former director of national intelligence told MSNBC's Chuck Todd in early March that he had seen "no evidence" of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin.

Rep. Devin Nunes.J. Scott Applewhite/AP

Nunes a few weeks ago stepped aside from the committee's investigation into Trump's ties to Russia. He handed the probe over to Conaway in early April amid questions about his ability to lead an unbiased investigation.

Nunes, who served on Trump's transition team, came under intense scrutiny last month for his decision to bypass the rest of his committee and brief Trump on classified executive-branch documents that he said showed that members of Trump's transition team had been swept up in government surveillance.

Reports have said he obtained those documents from White House officials — despite Nunes' earlier claims that he got them from an intelligence source — fueling speculation that administration officials had orchestrated the stunt to distract the press from Comey's revelation that the FBI was investigating whether various Trump associates had ties to Russia.

The committee's ranking Democrat, Rep. Adam Schiff, criticized Nunes for bypassing the committee, calling on him to either share the documents with his colleagues or recuse himself.

"I don't know how to conduct a credible investigation if you have even one person, let alone the chairman, of a committee saying, 'I've seen evidence, but I won't share it with anyone else,'" Schiff told CNN late last month. "We can't conduct an investigation this way. That's not sustainable. It's not credible."

The House Intelligence Committee said on Friday that it had invited three former officials with knowledge of Russia's interference in the US election to testify in an open hearing in May, over a month after the committee's chairman first scrapped the ...

Former acting attorney general Sally Yates, who is said to have told the White House that then-National Security Adviser Michael Flynn was vulnerable to blackmail, has been invited to testify publicly before Congress. The Republican and Democrat ...

The House Intelligence Committee has invited a number of former senior Obama administration officials, including former acting attorney general Sally Yates, to testify before the panel in a public setting, the latest indication that the committee is ...

The invitation comes after the cancellation of a previous committee hearing at which the former acting attorney general was scheduled to testify. By Matthew Cella, Staff Writer | April 21, 2017, at 2:09 p.m.. MORE. LinkedIn · StumbleUpon · Google + ...

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) - U.S. Veterans Affairs Deputy Secretary Scott Blackburn says a top priority of the agency is to find ways to curb suicides among veterans and boost access to mental health care.

Blackburn visited with patients, doctors and administrators at the VA hospital in Albuquerque on Friday. Staffing shortages were among the concerns raised.

Blackburn, an Army veteran, said it’s unacceptable that about 20 veterans a day commit suicide. Of those, data shows about six receive care through the VA system and only half of them see a mental health provider.

Administrators acknowledged that recruiting psychiatrists has been a challenge in New Mexico but that the shortage extends beyond the VA system.

Hospital officials said New Mexico currently has a shortage of about 130 psychiatrists and is in need of dozens of primary care physicians.

The Treasury Department said it will not give Exxon Mobil a waiver to drill for oil in Russia despite U.S. sanctions against the country.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Friday in a statement that the administration, "will not be issuing waivers to U.S. companies, including Exxon, authorizing drilling prohibited by current Russian sanctions," according to the Associated Press.

Exxon was seeking a waiver in order to continue drilling in the Black Sea, the AP reports. The company previously had an agreement with Russian oil company PAO Rosneft.

Exxon would not confirm whether or not it was seeking the waiver at all earlier this month, Reuters reports. Exxon's former chief executive Secretary of State Rex Tillerson lobbied against the sanctions in 2014.

The move comes as the FBI and Congressional intelligence committees are investigating Russian hacking that allegedly attempted to influence the 2016 presidential election, as well as possible contact between Russian officials and members of President Donald Trump's campaign.

The police officer shot and killed in Thursday's terror attack near the Champs Élysées in Paris was an LGBT activist.

A French group for LGBT law enforcement officials, Flag, said in a Facebook post that Xavier Jugelé was a member of the association and praised him for his dedication as an activist.

"He was a simple man who loved his job, and he was really committed to the L.G.B.T. cause," the group's president, Mickaël Bucheron, told the New York Times. "He protested with us when there was the homosexual propaganda ban at the Sochi Olympic Games."

Jugelé was killed when an unidentified shooter ambushed law enforcement officials on one of Paris' busiest streets, the Champs Élysées. Three other people were injured, and the suspected gunman was shot dead by police. ISIS later claimed responsibility for the attack.

Thursday's ambush was not Jugelé's first experience with terrorism in Paris, as the officer had previously responded to the terror attack at the Bataclan theater in 2015, according to the Times.

But Ms Le Pen was not the only one to issue stern pledges. Mr Fillon, who also talks tough on security, said the fight against “Islamist totalitarianism” should be the next president’s priority.

“It will require an unyielding determination and a cool head,” the former prime minister said. “We are at war, there is no alternative, it’s us or them.”

Mr Fillon, though knocked off his initial course towards victory by incessant allegations involving “fake job” payments to his British wife, promised to govern with “an iron fist”.

But the moderate Mr Macron, whom other candidates have portrayed as too inexperienced, took a different tack, warning against any attempts to use the shooting for political gain. “I think we must once and for all have a spirit of responsibility at this extreme time and not give in to panic and not allow it to be exploited, which some might try to do,” he told French radio.

PARIS — A deadly shootout on Paris’s best-known boulevard darkened the final day of campaigning Friday in France’s pivotal presidential election, as President Trump predicted that the attack would help shape the outcome of voting Sunday, primarily benefiting far-right candidate Marine Le Pen.

Trump told the Associated Press that the assault on French police Thursday night would “probably help” Le Pen, who has raised many of the same anti-immigrant and security issues that were pushed by Trump during his campaign. Trump said he was not explicitly endorsing Le Pen but that he believes she is the candidate who is “strongest on borders, and she’s the strongest on what’s been going on in France,” AP reported.

Trump also told the news agency that he is not worried about emboldening terrorists by saying that an attack can have an impact on a democratic election.

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What the scene looks like in Paris after a shooting near the Champs-Elysees

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Three police officers were reportedly shot near a metro station at the center of the heavily traveled avenue. French news media, citing the Islamic State-affiliated Amaq news agency, reported that the terrorist group claimed responsibility for the attack.

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Three police officers were reportedly shot near a metro station at the center of the heavily traveled avenue. French news media, citing the Islamic State-affiliated Amaq news agency, reported that the terrorist group claimed responsibility for the attack.

April 20, 2017Police secure the Champs-Elysees, a busy avenue in Paris.Christian Hartmann/Reuters

“Another terrorist attack in Paris,” Trump wrote earlier Friday in a Twitter post. “The people of France will not take much more of this. Will have a big effect on presidential election!”

The French election has become a critical test of strength for Le Pen and her National Front party at a time when nationalism has overshadowed other votes in the West, including Trump’s victory and last year’s British referendum on leaving the European Union.

Le Pen’s opponents, meanwhile, have urged France to stand against the hard-line rhetoric that has dominated her campaign.

Despite a promise not to campaign following Thursday’s attack on police on the renowned Champs-Elysees, Le Pen reinforced her message in a speech Friday, calling on the French government to immediately reinstate border checks and expel foreigners being monitored by the intelligence services.

“My government of national unity will implement this policy, so that the republic will live, and that France will live,” she said in an impromptu news conference.

Despite some early calls to postpone Sunday’s first round of voting to elect a new president, Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve told reporters Friday morning that “nothing should hinder this fundamental democratic moment for our country.” He pledged heightened security as French voters go to the polls, including deployments of heavily armed soldiers from France’s Operation Sentinelle.

It was not immediately clear whether the timing of Thursday’s attack was linked to the election. But it appeared to have that effect in the public’s mind — coming as the 11 candidates were speaking in a televised debate event before a reported audience of millions.

One police officer was killed and two others were seriously injured when a gunman opened fire with a Kalashnikov assault rifle on a police patrol parked on the avenue, sending pedestrians fleeing into side streets. The Islamic State claimed responsibility.

The gunman was then shot dead as he tried to escape, Paris prosecutor François Molins told reporters. Investigators subsequently found a number of knives and a pump-action shotgun in the gunman’s car, as well as a message apparently scribbled in support of the Islamic State.

On Friday, Molins formally identified the gunman as Karim Cheurfi, a 39-year-old from the Paris suburbs who had a criminal record and was well-known to authorities. In a profile that mirrored those of the perpetrators of other recent, smaller-scale attacks, Cheurfi had been convicted no fewer than four times since 2003 and had spent nearly 14 years in prison from crimes ranging from burglary and theft to attempted murder.

Earlier in 2017, Molins said, French authorities were made aware that he had sought to purchase weapons and had made statements about wanting to kill police officers. As recently as April 7, Molins added, authorities had interviewed Cheurfi following a trip to Algeria. However, a judge decided not to revoke his probation.

Cheurfi’s former lawyer, Jean-Laurent Panier, told BFM television Friday that his client was “extremely isolated” and probably had “psychological” problems that went untreated. He said Cheurfi never spoke about religion, adding “his only conversations were about how to fill his daily life with video games,” AP reported.

The slain police officer, identified as Xavier Jugele, was a member of the LGBT police association and had spent his entire career in Paris, police officials said. He was 37 years old.

In November last year, according to L’Express newspaper, Jugele had attended a concert that reopened the Bataclan Theater, the main target in a series of Islamic State attacks on Paris in November 2015. “This concert is meant to celebrate life,” he told People Magazine. “To say no to terrorists.”

As the candidates vowed to suspend campaign events to honor the fallen officer, analysts were quick to say that the shooting, in a country that has suffered a string of devastating terrorist attacks in the past two years, was particularly advantageous for the right-wing, anti-immigrant presidential contenders — especially Le Pen, who has been sharply critical of “Islamist terrorism” for weeks.

The attack was claimed with unusual speed Thursday night by the Islamic State through its affiliated Amaq News Agency, which said it was carried out by a Belgian national it identified only by the pseudonym Abu Yusuf al-Baljiki.

But authorities and analysts urged caution in interpreting the information.

“It’s never happened in the past so quickly,” said Jean-Charles Brisard, an intelligence expert and director of the Paris-based Center for the Analysis of Terrorism, referring to the Islamic State tendency to claim attacks.

“Perhaps the individuals in question had some kind of coordination and were in contact with them,” he said, referring to the Islamic State, “but we should also not rule out the possibility that Amaq was too hasty in releasing its statements.”

Molins agreed. Regardless of Le Pen's exhortation to expel all those in France's so-called "S File," a list of approximately 10,000 names that authorities suspect of potential Islamist radicalism, Karim Cheurfi was never included in that file. According to Molins, at no point in his long period of incarceration did he "show signs of radicalization or proselytism."

"Now, it is a matter of determining the precise context of the act and possible complicities in its execution," he said.

On Friday, French police detained three family members of the dead gunman in the Paris suburbs, the Reuters news agency reported, citing legal sources.

The attack is expected to weigh heavily on voters’ minds as they prepare to go to the polls Sunday for the first round of the presidential election, which comes amid rising political extremes and ranks among France’s most crucial votes in decades. At stake is whether the country will remain in the European Union.

Until now, the contentious campaign has featured many themes — immigration, unemployment, taxation, globalization — but has lacked a central, defining issue. Thursday’s attack, analysts said, could be a last-minute game changer.

“Now there is a structuring thematic, and that thematic is terrorism,” said François Heisbourg, a defense expert and former French presidential adviser on national security. “But if terrorism will now be at the front of everyone’s mind, we have no idea how that plays.”

The candidates, especially on the right, wasted no time in emphasizing the gravity of the issue.

Echoing Le Pen, François Fillon, the embattled contender from France’s more mainstream conservative party, said Friday that the fight against “Islamist totalitarianism” should be “the priority of the next government.”

By contrast, Emmanuel Macron, the popular independent candidate vying for the presidency, however, was quick to argue against any fearmongering.

“We must not yield to fear today,” he said Thursday. “This is what our assailants are waiting for, and it’s their trap.”

It remains unclear what kind of effect the Champs-Elysees attack could have on French voters. Similar incidents in the past have led to both the embrace and rejection of right-wing agendas.

In 2002, for instance, a law-and-order scandal just before the first round of the vote partially helped Jean-Marie Le Pen, the father of Marine Le Pen and founder of the National Front, to win enough votes to enter the second and final round. Le Pen ultimately lost by a landslide in that final contest, but his momentary rise would have been unlikely without the last-minute incident, experts said.

But in 2012, a terrorist attack on a Jewish school in Toulouse in the final weeks before the French election that year did not swing the polls in favor of conservative Nicolas Sarkozy, then the incumbent, hard-line president with a reputation for being tough on crime. François Hollande, a socialist, won that election instead.

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Similarly, in advance of Britain’s referendum on European Union membership in June 2016, the murder of Jo Cox, a pro-“Remain” member of the British Parliament, by a nationalist supporter of the “Leave” campaign, did not dissuade British voters from voting to exit the E.U., as analysts had speculated it might.

The Islamic State has asserted responsibility for previous attacks in France, including the coordinated November 2015 terrorist assault on multiple targets in Paris that left 130 people dead and more than 360 wounded.

After that attack and others in the past two years — many perpetrated by Islamic State militants or those claiming to be inspired by the extremist group — terrorism and national security have become crucial issues in France’s most contentious election in decades.

Souad Mekhennet in Frankfurt, Germany, Michael Birnbaum in Brussels and Brian Murphy and Willilam Branigin in Washington contributed to this report.

PARIS The man who shot dead a French policeman in a suspected Islamist militant attack had served time for previous armed assaults on law enforcement officers, police sources said on Friday, as authorities sought possible accomplices.

The gunman, identified as Karim Cheurfi, opened fire on a police vehicle parked on the Champs Elysees in Paris late on Thursday, killing one officer and injuring two others before being shot dead.

The attack, which was claimed by Islamic State, overshadowed the last day of campaigning for Sunday's presidential election first round.

Cheurfi, 39, a French national who lived with his mother in the eastern Paris suburb of Chelles, had been convicted for previous gun attacks on law enforcement officers going back 16 years.

Police found a note defending Islamic State near his body and believe he had "opened fire on the officers in the knowledge he would be killed by them", a source close to the investigation said.

In addition to the assault rifle used in the attack, a pump action shotgun and knives were in his car, the police sources said. Three of his family members have been placed in detention, the French interior ministry announced on Friday.

Cheurfi served 10 years in prison after firing on two plainclothes officers in 2001 as they tried to apprehend him in a stolen car. While in detention, he shot and wounded a prison officer after seizing his gun.

Released on probation in 2015 from a further two-year jail term imposed for lesser offences, Cheurfi was arrested again in February after threatening to kill police officers - but released for lack of evidence.

A French interior ministry spokesman initially confirmed on Friday that a second man was being sought, based on information from Belgian security services.

"It's too early to say how or whether he was connected to what happened on the Champs Elysees," ministry spokesman Pierre-Henry Brandet said. "There are a certain number of leads to check. We are not ruling anything out."

REUTERS/Benoit Tessier

CONFUSION OVER ISLAMIC STATE CLAIM

A potential second suspect was identified as Youssouf El Osri in a document seen by Reuters. Belgian security officials had warned French counterparts before the attack that El Osri was a "very dangerous individual en route to France" aboard the Thalys high-speed train.

The warning was circulated more widely among French security services in the hour following the Champs Elysees attack.

Brandet later told BFM TV that a man with that name had turned himself in at a police station in Antwerp.

Islamic State, which has hundreds of French-speaking fighters, claimed responsibility for the Champs Elysees shooting soon afterwards, in a statement identifying the attacker as "Abu Yousif al-Belgiki (the Belgian)".

El Osri's connection with either the downed assailant or the man named by Islamic State remained unclear on Friday.

"We don't understand why Islamic State has identified the wrong person," said a police source. "What does seem clear is that Islamic State was planning something."

Coming just days after police said they had foiled another planned Islamist attack, arresting two men in the southern city of Marseille, the Champs Elysees shooting dominated the final day of election campaigning.

Conservative candidate Francois Fillon and Marine Le Pen, leader of the far-right National Front, both talked tough on law and order while centrist front-runner Emmanuel Macron stressed he was also up to the challenge.

A seven-year-old boy has miraculously survived a ten-storey fall from a building after using an umbrella as a ‘parachute’, according to local media reports.

The boy was believed to have been trying to imitate a cartoon character he had been watching on television at his home in the eastern Chinese city of Suzhou. It is understood that his parents had left him at home alone.

He was rushed for emergency treatment at the Affiliated Children’s Hospital at Suzhou University where doctors performed emergency surgery. The boy, who has not been named was removed from the hospital's critical list last night, according to doctors.

The boy's fall was partially broken by a power line, according to reports, leaving him lying on the ground injured next to a large red umbrella.

Video footage of the boy's mother collapsing at the scene went viral on Chinese social media networks and was repeatedly aired on local on Chinese television which featured his "miraculous" escape on evening news bulletins.

This is not the first time that a child in China has been injured after imitating stunts from films and TV shows, leading to a debate over whether films and TV programmes are carry sufficient warnings and appropriate age ratings.

Last month, a five-year-old girl jumped off the 11th floor of a building while carrying a backpack and umbrella in the far-Western Chinese city of Urumqi.

She survived after landing on a fourth floor balcony, but suffered serious injuries. The girl had been inspired by watching the cartoon ‘Boonie Bears’, according to local reports.

PARIS (AP) — The Champs-Elysees gunman who shot and killed a police officer just days before France's presidential election was detained in February for threatening police but then freed, two officials told The Associated Press on Friday. He was also convicted in 2003 of attempted homicide in the shootings of two police officers.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A Russian government think tank controlled by Vladimir Putin developed a plan to swing the 2016 U.S. presidential election to Donald Trump and undermine voters’ faith in the American electoral system, three current and four former U.S. officials told Reuters.

They described two confidential documents from the think tank as providing the framework and rationale for what U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded was an intensive effort by Russia to interfere with the Nov. 8 election. U.S. intelligence officials acquired the documents, which were prepared by the Moscow-based Russian Institute for Strategic Studies [https://en.riss.ru/], after the election.

The institute is run by retired senior Russian foreign intelligence officials appointed by Putin’s office.

The first Russian institute document was a strategy paper written last June that circulated at the highest levels of the Russian government but was not addressed to any specific individuals.

It recommended the Kremlin launch a propaganda campaign on social media and Russian state-backed global news outlets to encourage U.S. voters to elect a president who would take a softer line toward Russia than the administration of then-President Barack Obama, the seven officials said.

A second institute document, drafted in October and distributed in the same way, warned that Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton was likely to win the election. For that reason, it argued, it was better for Russia to end its pro-Trump propaganda and instead intensify its messaging about voter fraud to undermine the U.S. electoral system’s legitimacy and damage Clinton’s reputation in an effort to undermine her presidency, the seven officials said.

The current and former U.S. officials spoke on the condition of anonymity due to the Russian documents’ classified status. They declined to discuss how the United States obtained them. U.S. intelligence agencies also declined to comment on them.

Putin has denied interfering in the U.S. election. Putin’s spokesman and the Russian institute did not respond to requests for comment.

The documents were central to the Obama administration's conclusion that Russia mounted a “fake news” campaign and launched cyber attacks against Democratic Party groups and Clinton's campaign, the current and former officials said.

“Putin had the objective in mind all along, and he asked the institute to draw him a road map,” said one of the sources, a former senior U.S. intelligence official.

Trump has said Russia’s activities had no impact on the outcome of the race. Ongoing congressional and FBI investigations into Russian interference have so far produced no public evidence that Trump associates colluded with the Russian effort to change the outcome of the election.

Four of the officials said the approach outlined in the June strategy paper was a broadening of an effort the Putin administration launched in March 2016. That month the Kremlin instructed state-backed media outlets, including international platforms Russia Today and Sputnik news agency, to start producing positive reports on Trump’s quest for the U.S. presidency, the officials said.

Russia Today did not respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson for Sputnik dismissed the assertions by the U.S. officials that it participated in a Kremlin campaign as an “absolute pack of lies.” “And by the way, it's not the first pack of lies we're hearing from 'sources in U.S. official circles'," the spokesperson said in an email.

PRO-KREMLIN BLOGGERS

Russia Today and Sputnik published anti-Clinton stories while pro-Kremlin bloggers prepared a Twitter campaign calling into question the fairness of an anticipated Clinton victory, according to a report by U.S. intelligence agencies on Russian interference in the election made public in January. [http://bit.ly/2kMiKSA]

Russia Today’s most popular Clinton video - “How 100% of the 2015 Clintons’ ‘charity’ went to ... themselves” - accumulated 9 millions views on social media, according to the January report. [http://bit.ly/2os8wIt]

The report said Russia Today and Sputnik “consistently cast president elect-Trump as the target of unfair coverage from traditional media outlets."

The report said the agencies did not assess whether Moscow’s effort had swung the outcome of the race in Trump’s favor, because American intelligence agencies do not “analyze U.S. political processes or U.S. public opinion.” [http://bit.ly/2kMiKSA]

CYBER ATTACKS

Neither of the Russian institute documents mentioned the release of hacked Democratic Party emails to interfere with the U.S. election, according to four of the officials. The officials said the hacking was a covert intelligence operation run separately out of the Kremlin.

The overt propaganda and covert hacking efforts reinforced each other, according to the officials. Both Russia Today and Sputnik heavily promoted the release of the hacked Democratic Party emails, which often contained embarrassing details.

Five of the U.S. officials described the institute as the Kremlin’s in-house foreign policy think tank.

The institute’s director when the documents were written, Leonid Reshetnikov, rose to the rank of lieutenant general during a 33-year-career in Russia’s foreign intelligence service, according to the institute’s website [http://bit.ly/2oVhiCF]. After Reshetnikov retired from the institute in January, Putin named as his replacement Mikhail Fradkov. The institute says he served as the director of Russia’s foreign intelligence service from 2007 to 2016. [http://bit.ly/2os4tvz]

Reuters was unable to determine if either man was directly involved in the drafting of the documents. Reshetnikov’s office referred questions to the Russian institute.

On its website, the Russian institute describes itself as providing “expert appraisals,” “recommendations,” and “analytical materials” to the Russian president’s office, cabinet, National Security Council, ministries and parliament. [http://bit.ly/2pCBGpR]

On Jan. 31, the websites of Putin’s office [http://bit.ly/2os9wMr] and the institute [http://bit.ly/2oLn9Kd] posted a picture and transcript of Reshetnikov and his successor Fradkov meeting with Putin in the Kremlin. Putin thanked Reshetnikov for his service and told Fradkov he wanted the institute to provide objective information and analysis.

“We did our best for nearly eight years to implement your foreign policy concept,” Reshetnikov told Putin. “The policy of Russia and the policy of the President of Russia have been the cornerstone of our operation.”

KABUL, Afghanistan — Dozens of soldiers were killed on Friday when Taliban gunmen and suicide bombers in military uniforms stormed an Afghan Army base in northern Afghanistan, Afghan and Western officials said. The attack on the 209th Corps in Balkh ...

A group of heavily armed Taliban suicide bombers Friday attacked a regional military base in northern Afghanistan, reportedly killing dozens of soldiers in one of the deadliest assaults on Afghan forces in recent years. Local authorities said the ...

KABUL — Disguised in army uniforms, a group of Taliban insurgents stormed an army base in Afghanistan's most secure northern Balkh province Friday, killing several dozen soldiers in one of the bloodiest such attacks in years, officials said. There ...

Afghan national Army (ANA) troops keep watch near the site of an ongoing attack on an army headquarters in Mazar-i-Sharif, northern Afghanistan April 21, 2017. REUTERS/Anil Usyan. 1/2. left. right. Afghan national Army (ANA) troops arrive near the site ...

At least 50 Afghan soldiers have been killed in an attack by Taliban insurgents on a military base in northern Balkh province, military officials say. Reports say the number of casualties is far higher than the eight deaths initially reported. The ...

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